


Waters Rising

by walk_in_sunshine



Category: Redwall Series - Brian Jacques
Genre: Character Death, Drowning, Flood Damage, Memories, Post-Martin the Warrior, Pre-Mossflower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-24 00:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12001539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walk_in_sunshine/pseuds/walk_in_sunshine
Summary: The rains ceased. It doesn't feel like a victory.





	Waters Rising

**Author's Note:**

> So this is uber late and not very well-planned or thought out, but it's here! Does it get a gold star for trying? Kinda went off the prompt, but it's hard to think of anything but Harvey damage right now living in Fort Worth (where we're not quite touched by the storm, but we can still feel what's going on).

 

The rains ceased. He can hear the dormouse family, soaked but alive-

 

_-alive thanks to you-_

 

_-you saved us-_

_-thanks the seasons-_

_-bless you-_

-chittering from the home above.

 

It doesn't feel like a victory.

 

Their squirrel hosts had made themselves scarce. They had reason to. They won't be thanking him.

 He watches moonlight pattern the slow-drifting black waters. Shadows bump the laps of great trees, and he tries not to imagine them as things once alive. A drop of water slides down his snout to drop from his nose, and he tries to pretend his eyes aren't stinging.

 A scattering of cold and wet spills from a branch above. He doesn't have the energy to react. His own branch sags under the weight of a second creature, and he regards the squirrel with a sideways glance.

 "The missus'll be servin' dinner soon." His voice is gruff, and he keeps his face turned carefully away from the mouse as though he too would like to pretend his life had not washed away.

 "Come up."

 The mouse let his gaze fall back to the dark waters.

 "Dry off."

 A mole-sized shadow drifts between the trunks of two alders.

 "Eat."

 The mouse could smell dinner above the earthy scents of a storm-roughened forest but what he  sees and what he smells twine together dangerously like a memory he doesn't want to bear, and soup is the last thing that'll appeal his empty stomach. 

 The squirrel can't blame him.

 "Go on, young creature. I'll keep watch here." _For survivors._

"I'm sorry." 

 The words are hollow. Eyes made black by shadow turn, and the squirrel clutches his perch with ragged claws.

 "For your son."

 Bark peels beneath the claws. The eyes turn away.

 "He's not the first creature I've failed to save."

 The squirrel shakes his head but his companion isn't watching.

 "I'll remember him."

 And the mouse is gone, climbing the slippery face of the oak, leaving the father to grieve.

 "Will you stay, sir?"

 "We've space in our burrow- just go' wait the waters to recede."

 "-still risin', they are-"

 "-hear a dam's broke upriver-"

 "- a whole holt of otters drowned! D'ya hear me?"

 The mouse hadn't known what sort of racket a dormouse family could make. He sips his soup and watches the lady of the house, searching her red-rimmed eyes when he happens to catch them. 

 "I'll stay until the waters recede," his sudden voice silences the home. He thinks he hears a plate shatter upstairs- _the dead one's lover. The one that turned on him with baleful eyes and demanded an answer to his failure._  The dormice are ecstatic. "I'll help in the search for survivors."

 The chatter breaks out.

 "And then I must leave."

 Silence again.

 "Where will you be going?" 

 It's the first he's heard from the squirrelwife. Her voice is strained and a little low.

 "South."

 She nods dumbly, wiping the single plate she's spent the last hour cleaning.

 "It's dangerous."

 He knows.

 "If..." The plate threatens to crack in her paws. "If y'meet my niece, my Amber... Tell 'er about her cousin."

 The squirrelwife is gone. Her husband is in the doorway and her would-be daughter-in-law at the top of the stair. He pushes himself away from the table before the dormice can speak, and meets the maiden in the stairway. 

 

They pause, the one angry and full of pain, the other filled with nothing at all.

 

He wishes he could apologize to her. But he has known the loss of a loved one, and he has known her pain. The words crumble in his throat and choke him.

  _It's alright,_  he thinks, and he doesn't flinch from her glower. _I hate me too._

He passes her without a word, seeking the guest room. Seeking solitude. He falls into a sleep he's tried to fight for three seasons, and he dreams of maidens crumpling at tower walls and squirrel-shaped shadows drowned in the night.

 

_The squirrel is so like Felldoh that Martin seizes it, the head cradled under his chin and his paws smoothing sodden fur. The father of the corpse finds him. A stranger: screaming, retching over the body of his son._

_The mouse's eyes are like those of the newly dead._

_The squirrel knows better than to ask._


End file.
